


remember me to the one who lives there (for once he was a true love of mine)

by traitorhero



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Multi, hints of Poe/Finn/Rey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 09:55:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5492957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/traitorhero/pseuds/traitorhero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before she leaves to find the lost Jedi Master, Rey says her goodbyes and learns that not all grief is sad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	remember me to the one who lives there (for once he was a true love of mine)

 A few of the pilots nodded to her as she walked into the base, her staff slung comfortably over her shoulder. Rey ducked her head slightly, watching them from the corner of her eye as they walked out into the sunlight. No one stopped her as she walked further into the base. Other men and women gave her warm smiles, which she did her best to return. If anyone noticed how it didn’t reach her eyes, they were kind enough not to say anything.

“Nice day?” Poe asked, looking up from the datapad in his hand as she slid into the room.

Rey shrugged, taking her staff and leaning it up against the doorframe. Poe shook his head and patted the seat next to him. Careful of the cables that lay across the floor, tied into the machine-bed that was keeping her first real friend alive, she walked to the seat, falling into it with a muffled thump.

“Nothing’s changed,” he told her. 

Her fingers curled in the soft fabric of her leggings, so different from the scavenged cloth she had worn before. She raised one briefly, before dropping it back onto her lap.

“You can touch him, you know,” Poe said. “It won’t hurt him.”

“He will wake up, won’t he?”

There had been another scavenger, his skin a mottled grey and brown from the years living in the deserts of Jakku, who had laid abed like Finn was now. He had died in the night, slipping away while the others waited around him. Then they had taken what they wanted from his stash, fighting and squabbling around his cooling body. While Finn didn’t own anything, the old fear still crept up her spine. They were both outsiders in this whole mess, no matter what General Leia or Poe said about them being heroes.

“When he’s ready, yeah,” Poe said. 

He reached his hand over to hold hers. His hands were callused, like hers, but different. He didn’t have the thin scars from prying out old motivators or the burns from dealing with old plasma. His hands were like Finn’s; calloused across the palms and index fingers, but soft like well worn leather. 

“I’m leaving soon,” she told him, her eyes focused on Finn’s rising and falling chest. “I need to find Luke Skywalker. Will you-”

The words caught in her throat, and she felt his hand tighten around hers.

“I’ll have him in fighting shape when you get back,” he promised. 

They sat for a little while, until someone came and called Poe away. He patted her shoulder as he stood, and ran the tips of his fingers across Finn’s forehead as he walked out the door. Rey counted Finn’s breaths as a hours passed. After two thousand, two hundred and eighty breaths, a doctor came into the room, a cart with nutrient packs and tubing pushed by a droid behind him. 

When he picked up the tubing, Ren got to her feet, grabbing her staff as she walked out. If she could fool herself into believing that he was merely sleeping, that any moment he would wake up and drag her off into some new adventure, she could keep going. She could leave him behind to go search for the last Jedi, and he would be up and about when she returned.

She could go looking for someone to teach her, and he would be still be here when he returned. 

Breathing deeply and shunting away the sense of loss, the sense that she would be the one abandoning someone, Rey walked deeper into the Resistance’s base. Her quarters were located on a lower level, but she had only been to them once. Sleeping in the chairs next to Finn’s bed, while uncomfortable, was a comfort in an unfamiliar place. Walking to a stairwell, she went down until she saw a hallway marked Cresh and entered it. Almost all of the doors were closed, but as she walked past one marked 327, Rey stopped, a sense of deep despair and grief almost bringing her to her knees.

The door was held open by the edge of a rug, the brilliant red patterns contrasting with the stone and durasteel of the rest of the corridor. Slipping her hand inside the small crack, Rey pushed the door open again and stepped inside. Before the door could get stuck again, she tugged it inside, letting the door close completely.

“Gial, I said I wouldn’t be at the meeting-”

Rey tried and failed not to look abashed as General Leia walked into view. The older woman looked composed, which was completely at odds with what Rey felt around her. The silence between them grew, and Rey shifted her feet, meaning to turn and leave.

“Sorry,” she said. “I was looking for my room, and I felt that someone was sad. I should probably just go.”

The General’s face softened just a bit, and she beckoned Rey further into the room. Following her, she steps into an array of color, green tapestries covering metal walls and more rugs in varying sizes, shapes, and colors across the floor. A waist high table held a few trinkets, the grief emanating from the General touching them briefly before wrapping around her like a cloak again. 

“Luke used to do the same thing,” the General said, walking to a pair of couches and sitting down. She gestured for Rey to take a seat in the other. She did so hesitantly, resting her staff against the back of the seat. 

“Luke Skywalker?” she couldn’t help but ask.

“Yes,” Leia replied. “He always seemed to know when Han-”

The General’s voice faltered for a moment, and Rey couldn’t help but flinch at the agony that seemed to spiral out of the other woman. It was gone as quickly as it had appeared, curling around her again like one of the sand snakes back on Jakku. 

“When Han had said something stupid to upset me,” she continued. “Which was quite often, as you might imagine.”

“You cared for him.”

“Yes,” Leia said. “Even after Ben, after we both ran away, I loved him.”

“I’m sorry,” Rey said. Leia looked at her in confusion, and she rushed to explain herself. “It was my fault he was even there in the first place.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Leia said, reaching across the gap between them to grab her hands. 

Her hands, unlike Poe’s or Finn’s, were soft. Surprisingly, Rey could feel an old scar across her palm, similar to one that she herself had from gripping a cable to tightly. While no one rose to the title of General without having at fought, the woman across from her was so different than what she had been expecting.

“We just stood there,” Rey said. “And then he-”

She broke off this time, turning to face the trinket laden table. A small holo sat open, and for the first time she saw what it was displaying. A much younger Han sat with a young boy perched on his knee. Leia sat beside them, her hand on Han’s shoulder. They all looked happy, so different from the fractures that separated them now. 

“Death is a part of life,” Leia told her, squeezing her hands slightly. “Han wouldn’t want you to be sad on his account.”

“But you are.”

“Sometimes you can’t help but be sad. And I’m not only mourning him.”

“Your son,” Rey said, looking back at the General. “Kylo Ren.”

“Ben,” Leia told her. “His name is Ben, even if he doesn’t want it to be.”

“But he’s still alive. And he killed Han.”

“I know,” Leia said, releasing her hands to wrap her arms around herself. “That doesn’t mean that I can’t mourn the man he might have been.”

“Maybe he can come back,” she said. There had been a moment, when she and Finn had been looking down, when she had felt something in Kylo Ren. And even earlier, when he had held her as his prisoner, she had felt his conviction in his path waver. 

“I can only hope,” Leia replied. “But if even a small portion of him is anchored in the Light, I cannot feel it.”

There was nothing she could say in response to that. Her own connection to the Force, new as it was to her, couldn’t let her sense something as specific as what the General was talking about. 

“Maybe Luke can help us bring him back,” Rey said. Leia looked up at her, the barest hint of a smile on her face. 

“If you can convince him to,” she said. “He blames himself already for what Ben has done.”

“I’ll convince him.”

A little of the grief that surrounded Leia seemed to dissipate, although some still clung to her. It felt a little like how she did when she thought of the family that abandoned her. A scab, one that would scar over eventually, once she was ready to let it heal. 

**Author's Note:**

> Just a scene I felt was missing from the movie. Plus, I love seeing female characters interact, and there definitely wasn't enough Leia-Rey interaction for me. And I want to see Leia mourn, because she and Han did love one another for over thirty years.


End file.
